Eric Lichtblau and Mark Mazzetti
NY
Times
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
An anti-terrorist database used by the Defense Department in
an effort to prevent attacks on military installations included
intelligence tips about antiwar planning meetings held at churches,
libraries, college campuses and other locations, newly disclosed
documents show.
One tip in the database in February 2005, for instance, noted
that "a church service for peace" would be held in the
New York City area the next month. Another entry noted that antiwar
protesters would be holding "nonviolence training" sessions
at unidentified churches in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
The Defense Department said it tightened its procedures this
year to ensure that only material related to actual terrorist
threats - and not peaceable First Amendment activity - was included
in the database.
The head of the office that runs the database, known as Talon,
said Monday that material on antiwar protests should not have
been collected in the first place. "I don't want it, we shouldn't
have had it, not interested in it," said Daniel Baur, acting
director of the counterintelligence field-activity unit, which
runs the Talon program at the Defense Department. "I don't
want to deal with it."
He said that those operating the database had misinterpreted
their mandate and that what was intended as an anti- terrorist
database became, in some respects, a catch-all for leads on possible
disruptions and threats against military installations in the
United States, including protests against the military presence
in Iraq.
Once the problem was discovered, Baur said, "we fixed it,"
and more than 180 entries in the database related to war protests
were deleted from the system last year. Out of 13,000 entries
in the database, many of them uncorroborated leads on possible
threats, several thousand others were also purged because he said
they had "no continuing relevance."
Amid controversy over the database, leads from so-called neighborhood
watch programs and other tips about possible threats are down
significantly this year, Baur said. He added that he was concerned
that the scrutiny had created "a huge chilling effect"
that could lead the military to miss legitimate threats.
Baur was responding to the latest batch of documents produced
by the military under a Freedom of Information Act request brought
by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups. The union
planned to release the documents publicly Tuesday, and its officials
said they would push for Democrats, newly empowered in Congress,
to hold hearings about the Talon database.
Ben Wizner, a lawyer for the union in New York, said the documents
suggested that the military's efforts to glean intelligence on
protesters went beyond what was previously known. If intelligence
officials "are going to be doing investigations or monitoring
in a place where people gather to worship or to study, they should
have a pretty clear indication that a crime has occurred,"
Wizner added.
The leader of one antiwar group mentioned often in the latest
military documents provided to the union said he was skeptical
that the military had ended its collection of material on war
protests. "I don't believe it," said Michael McPhearson,
a former army captain who is now the executive director of Veterans
for Peace, a group in St. Louis, Missouri.
McPhearson said he found the references to his group in the Talon
database unsurprising and he said the group continued to use public
settings and the Internet to plan its protests. "We don't
have anything to hide," he said. "We're not doing anything
illegal."
